Where Have All the Good Stories Gone? (2/2011)

 In a month when I’ve been hit with the unfortunate news that two members of the “Jersey Shore” cast have or will be publishing books in the coming months, I’m forced to wonder whether we have in fact hit out literary rock bottom as a society.  It’s discouraging to say the least to walk through a bookstore and realize that some of the bestselling “authors” are in fact some of reality television and celebrity gossip’s biggest stars.  And what makes it sting all the more is reading good literature on my own time and knowing that most of my peers, and probably even fewer of those younger than myself, will ever get to know the beauty that is traditional English literature.
I recently completed my journey through the Jane Austen collection. Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey were the last two on my list, and once I’d read one I couldn’t wait to pick up the other.  I promised myself that, because Austen’s novels are so wonderful and few, I would wait as long as possible between books so as to put off the moment when I realized there was nothing left of her magnificent prose to read.  That the library happened to have both of these two books available simultaneously seemed serendipitous, though, so I broke my own rule and devoured both novels in the course of ten days.
The results were as I anticipated:  I was sucked into the vivid nineteenth century world that Austen paints so effectively, sympathizing with characters with whom I would never think I had anything in common, and even more uncharacteristic for me, I rooted for their happy ending to the very last pages.  It’s just the magic that her books work on me— I fall into them so wholly that I lose sight of the fact that none of it should be relatable for me, but I don’t care.
I wish more of today’s writers could be like that, could have that kind of influence over me.  I wish any of today’s writers, especially today’s popular writers, could invoke the kind of feeling I get when I read Jane Austen, and could invoke it in kids who are slaves to the Internet and television, kids who’ve been bred to care about nothing other than themselves.  I wish there were still high standards for what passes as literature in today’s market.  I think about how hard Jane Austen must have worked and how hard she must have fought to get her words read, and it makes me feel embarrassed and ashamed to see the bullshit in the front of Barnes & Noble, vapid celebrity faces grinning at me, like they know exactly who they’re taking the opportunity away from, and relish it.
Maybe this bitterness comes from my own aspirations, but I think I’d be irked either way.  Just because someone is famous doesn’t mean they are necessarily good at anything (even the thing they purport to “do” for a living), and we should stop throwing our attention at people just because they’re good-looking, or worse, stupid.